Battleships are from a bygone age when men
were men and lobbed high explosive shells at each other instead of hiding behind computer
screens and turned war into a video game. So why would the US want to bring these relics
of war back? To be fair, the battleship may have once ruled
the seas, but the inherent limitations of ballistic artillery made them obsolete first
with the wide adoption of the aircraft carrier and with the final nail in the coffin being
the perfection of the anti-ship missile. When it comes to missiles and a battleship's
main guns, there's just no comparison- most anti-ship missiles pack less explosive power
than the big 16-inch guns of an old US battleship, but they make up for that lost firepower with
extreme precision. Even with modernization upgrades done to the
USS Iowa, America's last battleship to ever see combat, getting shells on target was more
a game of “good enough” than actual precision. On the other hand, a missile will strike exactly
where it can do the most damage, making it an obvious upgrade for 'dumb' artillery. But is it an upgrade? As war evolves, the US Navy has discovered
a pressing need to take a significant step backwards- maybe even back to the age of the
battleship. And it all has to do with the evolving technological
capabilities of adversaries like China. But why did arguably the most awesome ships
ever to be created really go extinct in the first place, and why couldn't we have just
kept upgrading them to remain viable through the missile age? Historians argue about when the age of the
battleship truly started, but from our point of view, the moment someone realized they
could put a big gun on a boat and shoot other boats with it, the battleship was born. It wasn't until the late 1880s though that
the term 'battleship' was used in the modern context, when it was used to describe a growing
fleet of ironclad warships. Today they're known as pre-dreadnought battleships,
but back in the day, they cut an imposing figure. When most ships still utilized sails, ironclads
featured hulking plates of armor, large guns with more in common with field artillery than
traditional ship cannons, and steam power. Sliding right on past the fact that we all
took the blue pill on the whole 'steel floats now' thing, dreadnoughts became the premier
form of naval firepower by 1900, and were used as a measurement of a nation's might. They were today's supercarriers, extremely
expensive to build and operate, and you absolutely did not want one showing up off your coast
one day. The number of battleships a nation had directly
impacted international diplomacy, as in: I have more battleships than you, so do what
I say. These ships were so powerful that they prompted
the first modern arms race, leading to a series of naval treaties to limit how many battleships
each nation could have. Despite its official obsolesce still being
decades away, the Battle of Jutland in 1916 was the last naval engagement where battleships
were used as the primary combatants. In fact, the actual usefulness of battleships
was being questioned even during their heyday- sure, they were impressive and certainly intimidating
weapons of war, but these big ships rarely proved decisive in naval engagements. Rather, smaller, more agile ships were often
the deciding factor. To make matters worse, the growing proliferation
of things like torpedoes and naval mines increased the vulnerability of these hulking behemoths,
to the point that by 1920 many were asking if it was even worth it to continue spending
vast sums of money building and maintaining these huge ships. In World War II, the battleship's disputed
reign as king of the seas came to a decisive end thanks to the aircraft carrier and its
ability to launch more and more advanced and capable aircraft. Now a carrier could send out swarms of dive
and torpedo bombers that were far more accurate than any battleships, nimbler, and had greater
range. They were also cheaper to build and maintain. Shortly after the war, navies around the world
began to decommission their surviving battleships. The time of the aircraft carrier had arrived. Despite this, the United States maintained
several battleships in its reserve fleets, ready to be reactivated in case of emergency. During the Korean and Vietnam wars, the US
would reactive battleships to provide naval gunfire support, with the last combat tour
of a US battleship taking place during Desert Storm with the USS Iowa. By 1964 though, all but four of these mighty
ships had been stricken from the registry and sent to be scrapped or sunk, and the US
kept these four battleships ready for combat long after other nations had gotten rid of
theirs. It wasn't really the Navy's choice though,
but rather congress, which mandated that the navy should maintain the big armored ships
ready in case of war to provide fire support. In the aftermath of Vietnam, the United States
saw a buildup of the Soviet naval and air force, prompting President Ronald Reagan to
propose that the navy should be grown to 600 ships. As part of this naval buildup, all four remaining
battleships underwent modernization upgrades. However, when the US won the Cold War global
championship belt, this huge navy suddenly had no strong enough opponent to oppose it,
and plans to scrap all remaining battleships were made. Congress intervened however, forcing the navy
to maintain two battleships ready for combat at all times. Their chief concern was providing adequate
fire support for Marine amphibious operations, and until the Navy convinced congress it could
provide that support through conventional means, it was forced to spend money keeping
the USS New Jersey and Wisconsin ready for combat. They remained combat-ready until the late
2000s for one key reason. When it comes to battleships, one thing sets
them apart from modern crafts: firepower. And the amount of pain a battleship can bring
isn't easily matched even with modern weapons. The USS Iowa, the last US battleship to ever
see combat in Desert Storm, was equipped with nine 16-inch guns, which it could fire once
every 30 to 40 seconds, and twelve 5-inch guns with faster rates of fire. After modernization upgrades, it was also
equipped with 32 tomahawk cruise missiles, as well as 16 Harpoon anti-ship missiles. She was the best of both worlds, but it was
those big 16-inch guns that prompted congress to keep two battleships ready for combat well
past their retirement age. The main concern plaguing military planners
recently has been providing adequate firepower during a contested amphibious operation, and
while missiles and aircraft are nice, they have significant limitations- limitations
which have reared their ugly heads again and now have the US Navy reconsidering the need
for big guns once more. Both missiles and aircraft can deliver precision
firepower to hit the enemy exactly where it hurts most, a capability that even guided
artillery shells can have difficulty reliably executing. They are also far more flexible tools than
artillery, and have greatly extended range- a modern cruise missile can fly for hundreds
of miles before striking its target, while a battleship typically has a range of 24 miles-
well inside the threat envelope of modern anti-ship weapons. Both missiles and aircraft are expensive though,
and as the Ukraine war has shown, modern conventional war chews through inventory at a truly terrifying
rate. A US precision bomb- the Joint Direct Attack
Munition- can run between $21,000 and $36,000 per unit, and that's not the cost of the bomb,
but rather the strap-on kit that's added to a 'dumb' bomb to make it smart. Each ‘dumb’ bomb can cost several thousand
dollars each on top of that. Meanwhile, a Tomahawk cruise missile will
set you back about $2 million for the latest and most advanced model. Each salvo of Tomahawk strikes is like throwing
two dozen suburban homes at the enemy, because we live in an absolute nut house of a world. The cost of a modern 5-inch shell used aboard
guns across the US surface fleet though, is only a few hundred dollars, and that price
point is becoming incredibly attractive to Navy leadership. After seeing the blistering rate of weapon
consumption in Ukraine, the US has realized that first of all, its existing stockpiles
are not realistically deep enough for a prolonged conflict, and second, in any confrontation
against the second-richest nation on earth, China, the US would find itself hard pressed
to outspend it in a near-peer conflict. Rather than hurling three-bedroom-two-bath
homes at a target, a capable 5-inch gun could deliver the same amount of pain for a few
hundred bucks instead. But there are other reasons why big naval
guns are becoming the talk of the town again, and that has to do with technology. As naval technology advances, the Navy is
finding out that the best way to beat future tech is to... go retro. The problem with modern weapons is that they're
so smart that they rely on sophisticated sensors and a network of assets to hit their target,
and those sensors and networks can all be attacked directly or indirectly. It's known as a 'kill chain,' and it's the
reason why the US is pretty confident that despite China's vast arsenal of anti-ship
ballistic missiles, it's still a safe bet to spend billions on supercarriers. By knocking out a node or two in a kill chain,
you can bring the entire thing down and render an enemy's weapons useless- or at least force
them to employ them in ways that make their delivery platform vulnerable. The US has invested heavily in redundancy
to the point that its kill chains are now termed 'kill networks,' but these can still
be vulnerable to attack. A kinetic attack could physically destroy
observation and reconnaissance assets needed to locate and track targets, while electromagnetic
warfare could interrupt data transmission or mess with an incoming munition, or plane's
sensors. Cyber attacks could corrupt a kill chain and
make it inoperable, or even worse, ineffective, thus wasting any munitions fired while the
kill chain is disabled. The beauty of a big, 16-inch shell is that
it's impossible to hack. Precision-guided shells rely on GPS to strike
their targets, but even if you interrupt that signal, you've still got a significant amount
of explosives screaming through the air and inbound on your general location. With enough of them being delivered in short
order, accuracy becomes redundant- so rather than using expensive missiles to complete
this saturation attack, why not use dumb munitions that will end up costing the taxpayer a fraction
of what the ‘smart’ option would? Shells also take up significantly less room
than aircraft or missiles- the Iowa class battleships carried 1200 rounds for their
16-inch guns. By comparison, a guided missile destroyer
will typically carry about 90 to 96 missiles- though some can be quad-packed, and not all
are meant for anti-ship or ground-attack purposes. The sheer number of rounds a battleship could
carry versus their contemporaries is yet another reason they remained attractive for so long. This was precisely the thinking of the US
congress in the early 2000s, as it pressured the Navy to come up with a better way to provide
fire support for amphibious operations than simply relying on aircraft or missiles. While using naval guns for this purpose would
put the ship in more danger by forcing it to be closer to the action, there's yet to
be an alternative to the sheer volume of fire that its massive guns can provide. Faced with this complex problem, the Navy
set to work developing what it would call Extended Range Guided Munitions for their
5-inch guns. These projectiles would have a range of 40
nautical miles and be precision guided, but ultimately the program was canceled in 2008
due to poor results. A sister program, the Ballistic Trajectory
Extended Range Munition, would meet a similar fate, also being canceled in the same year. Back in 1994 though, the Navy had initiated
a program to fulfill the need for naval fire support. The DD(X) program would evolve into the Zumwalt
destroyer program, which would carry the brand new Advanced Gun System and sport the fancy
Long Range Land Attack Projectiles. These rocket-assisted shells would reach out
and deliver democracy to someone as far as 60 miles away, and unlike other projectile
programs, actually worked quite well. The Zumwault however, was doomed almost from
the start, along with its fancy new gun and projectile. As more funding poured into the program, the
Navy cut a planned order of 32 down to 24. Then as concerns began to reverberate across
Washington that the Zumwalt was sucking up funds from other priority programs, that order
was further cut down to seven. Eventually, it would only result in the acquisition
of three ships of its class at a staggering cost. The Zumwault is an impressive design, including
stealth features that reduce its radar signature to that of a small fishing vessel. Its Advanced Gun System combined with the
Long Range Land Attack Projectile could put precision pain on targets at a range that
kept the ship at an acceptable range from potential threats. And it could do so cheaply- at least until
the cancellation of the program drove the cost of each individual shell to over a million
dollars. Without the benefits of economy of scale,
each slashing of the total number of hulls the navy would acquire skyrocketed the cost
of the Long Range Land Attack Projectile- which only the Zumwalt could fire. However, the ship was deemed too expensive
given its capabilities and potential vulnerability. The Zumwault couldn't fire RIM Standard missiles,
and thus couldn't provide adequate air defense coverage for US fleets. An enemy missile attack might leave a Zumwault
unharmed, believing it to be a harmless fishing vessel, but that wouldn't matter much when
the rest of its accompanying fleet is sunk instead. There was also significant concern that the
Zumwalt was not well suited to a specific threat that remains classified today. The navy instead believed existing Arleigh-Burke
destroyers were better suited for this mysterious threat. With no projectile, the Zumwalt's fancy Advanced
Gun System is literally useless- a fun little expenditure of several billion dollars total
in research and procurement costs that is currently being torn off the decks of the
three existing Zumwaults and turned to scrap. However, the problem of naval gun support
is still one that a growing part of the US navy believes needs addressing. Currently, the navy utilizes a 5-inch cannon
as a backup armament and against small boats, but this isn't enough to provide adequate
fire support in an environment that is being electronically denied or where aircraft are
under significant threat- which perfectly describes what a war with China in the Pacific
would look like. To fix this problem, in 1996, the Navy proposed
a simple but brilliant solution- if volume was the biggest concern, why not just put
more missiles on a ship? The arsenal ship program was aimed at producing
ships with as many as 500 vertical launch cells, and the Navy believed each ship would
only cost about $450 million. However, Congress would wind up cutting funding
for the program. Instead, the Navy ended up modifying four
of its oldest Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, replacing launch tubes that previously
held Trident nuclear missiles with tubes capable of launching the Tomahawk cruise missile. Each of these four submarines carries 154
Tomahawks and has the benefit of being completely submerged and thus very difficult to locate
and destroy. In 2013 though, the idea was resurrected in
response to the rising threat of China. Huntington Ingalls Industries proposed modifying
the San Antonio class of amphibious transport docks into arsenal ships which could carry
288 vertical launch cells. These ships would tag along with the rest
of the fleet and provide a mix of air and ballistic missile defense, as well as precision
strike capabilities. The idea was never followed through on, but
recently there has been renewed interest with one additional feature being focused on: an
arsenal ship that's fully automated. With the Navy admitting it cannot keep pace
with the Chinese navy in the Pacific due to its global commitments, it has focused on
developing unmanned surface and subsurface platforms. Currently, the Navy is still experimenting
with what roles these unmanned vessels are best suited for, but one is very obvious:
being used as a missile truck. An unmanned arsenal ship would be cheap to
operate given it would have no crew, and could be built to be fully or even partially submersible
to improve its defense. These ships would tag along with a surface
action group or carrier strike group and lend their firepower to the fight, using battle
links to strike at targets or intercept incoming threats. While it's unlikely we'll see a return of
giant battleships, one thing is clear: naval artillery is not dead, and there's no telling
what new form it might take in an increasingly denied environment where good old 'dumb' weapons
might be the most effective yet. Now go check out What Would It Take To Sink
USS Gerald R Ford Aircraft Carrier? Or click this other video instead.
